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afkarr -> RE: Mental Health and the lifestyle (2/20/2010 6:24:06 AM)
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The following is based on personal observations from spending 3+ years working int he mental health field:
Approximately only 10-15% of people with an official mental health diagnosis can be classified as severely mentalydisabled, meaning they have difficulty functioning at even a basic level, these people require at times 24 hour a day supervision, or intesnisve community support servics. They are often incapable of indepedndently managing simple tasks such as money management, grocery shopping/food preperation, maintanence of living quarters, and scheduling of appointments, etc. They frequentely display poor decision making skills, and can be vulnerable in many ways. These are the inpatient frequent flyers, they typically have histories of numerous psychiatric admission due to decompensation.e shouldn't be considered capable in "lifestyle" or many other choices, and responsible people should politely decline to play with them. Unfortunately, the world is full of irresponsible people all all persuasions- a problem we probably won't solve here.
There is another 20-30% that are moderately functional, they arew capable of idepedndent functioning with a combination of a stable medication regime and minimal support, they often do best when they have a supportive family to assist. They typically have far fewer patient admissions, sometimes going for years between severely decompensation episodes. They tend to have better decision making skills, and are usually quite capable for forming appropriate interpersonal relationships with others, vanilla, kinky, or whatever.
Then there is the remainder- those people are your family, frineds, colleagues, and sometimes yourself. These people are futional in both their personal and professional life, they are quite capable of independently maintaining without medications- they just feel better withit, and it makes life easier. These are the ones who you'd never pick out as being mental health clients. They are often quite successful (esp. those OCD folks), I know of several who have prominent careers. No reason they can't play as well as the next person- and I know more than one person from kinkyville who I discovered later had a shrink and a prescription.
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